For some time the telecommunications industry has provided services to allow a subscriber to receive calls while away from a “subscribed” location. For example, “call forwarding” is a service that allows a subscriber to redirect calls directed to a residence or place of work, for example. In addition, the wireless telephone permits a user to receive calls at any location. These solutions have migrated from specialty services, directed to frequently traveling businesspersons, to nearly all telephone users.
For many, however, call forwarding services often are too complicated to set up and too limited in their capabilities. For example, traditional call forwarding required the subscriber to remember to designate the forwarded locations before leaving the place from which calls were to be forwarded. As a result, if the subscriber forgot to activate the call forwarding service before leaving home, for example, the subscriber would have to return to home to do so. Of course, this was often an unacceptable alternative. “Flexible Call Forwarding” offered an improved solution over traditional call forwarding. Flexible Call Forwarding permitted the user to redirect calls from one location to another, using any station in the telecommunications network. However, even with Flexible Call Forwarding, a subscriber must actively enter instructions to the telephone network.
In addition, although wireless telephones offer a viable alternative to call forwarding, for many users wireless telephones are not yet reliable enough to replace the home or business telephone as the primary or sole point of contact. As a result, attempting to contact a person often requires a call to their home telephone, followed by a call to their work telephone, followed by a call to their wireless telephone.
Therefore, there is a need to provide a technique for forwarding a communication based on the location of the receiving customer.